I went to the Messneger's cottage yesterday

I went to the Messenger's cottage yesterday for lunch, as arranged, It's situated in the middle of pretty picture-postcard Cotswold country- pretty even this time of the year, when there isn't a leaf to be seen on the deciduous trees. The road wound and undulated between dewy meadows and green humpbacked hills dotted with sheep, through villages embalmed in a Sunday morning hush, past ancient churches and neat farmhouses and snug thatched cottages. 'Horseshoes' has a thatched roof, but it's more of a house than a cottage - double fronted, built of mellow Cotswold stone, its walls covered with wisteria which one can imagine dripping with mauve blossom in May. It has low, raftered ceilings, and a bumpy flagged floor covered with rugs, and a huge open fireplace in the living-room. Needless to say it's provided with central heating and other mod cons, all tastefully integrated into the eighteenth century fabric.
Here the Messengers' family simulates the life of English country folk for one or two days a week: Carrie bottles fruit and make preserves on the oil-fired Aga. Emily rides the pony she keeps at a local stable, and Ralph chops wood for the open fire or takes the younger children out for rambles and bike-rides. At the back of the house, however, a more exotic and sybaritic note is struck: a balcony, or 'deck' as they call it, has been constructed on two levels, with a redwood hot tub on the lower level. The effect is rather bizarre as you pass from the English eighteenth century of the house to twenty-century California in the back garden, like walking through different film sets in a studio.
After lunch ( a superb leg of local lamb, roasted to perfection, with slivers of garlic and sprigs of rosemary delicately inserted into its layer of fat) we went for a walk around a circuit of lanes and footpaths in the neighbourhood.
My ' lunch' invitation stretched inordinately, and in the end we left the house together at about seven o'clock. Suddenly the pace of life speeded up. Everybody bustled about, supervised by Carrie, picking up things and putting them away, resetting thermostats and turning light off, drawing curtains, and fastening shutters, making the house secure for another week. It was as if the curtain has come down on some dreamy pastoral idyll and the company was suddenly galvanized into actions shedding their costumes and packing up their props before moving on to the next venue. We parted in the lane outside the house as we got into our respective cars. I said goodbye and thanked them sincerely.
Form the book 'Thinks' by David Lodge

The conversation is taking place in the hot tub

The conversation is taking place in the hot tub in the back garden of the Messengers' country cottage. The ground slopes quite steeply away from the rear of the house, and a timber balcony has been constructed with steps that lead down to the garden. Halfway down there is a kind of mezzanine deck in which a redwood tub, some seven feet in diameter and five feet deep, has been fitted flush with the surface. A bench runs round the inner circumference, on which Helen and the Messenger family are companionably seated, hip to hip. The hot water bubbles up between their legs and sends wraiths of steam into the cold air. It is late afternoon, or early evening, and already dark. The only illumination comes from the blue light fitted inside the tub below the waterline, and the lanterns with thick amber glass cowls fixed at intervals on the staircase and along the decks.
Carrie clambers out of the tub, steadying herself with a hand on Ralph' shoulder. The water streams from her tight, dark swimming costume and pallid heavy limbs. She wraps herself in a towelling robe and thrusts her feet into a pair or rope-soiled mules. 'Time you kids got out too,' she says.
Form the book 'Thinks' by David Lodge

One redeeming feature

One redeeming feature of the expedition was that I saw Gloucester Cathedral for the first time. It's not huge, but beautifully proportionated, built of mellow Cotswold stone, with a remarkable square Perpendicular tower that has delicate fretted stonework running round the top like a balustrade. The cloisters are exquisite - among the finest in the country my Visitor's Guide claimed, and with justification, I should say. Edward II is buried here. All I know about him is from Marlowe's play, which may not be reliable, but makes him seem like a real person who once lived and breathed, not just a name in a history book. It seemed extraordinary to stand beside the remains of somebody who lived seven hundred years ago, and know who he was. If Ralph Messenger is right, the atoms of his dust are indestructible. But it is my mind that preserves his identity, and makes a connection between us.
As I trod the worn paving of the ancient aisles, pausing at intervals to admire fine brasses and carved statuary, another literary association came to mind. In the Golden Bowl Charlotte and the Prince begin their adulterous affair at Gloucester, delaying their return to London from a houseparty on the pretext of viewing the cathedral- and there's a reference to the tomb of Edward II, I'm sure. Did they really visit,it, to give circumstantial plausibility to their story when they returned to their respective spouses, or did they spend every stolen moment in their room at in the inn selected by the resourceful Charlotte? I don't have the novel to hand to check . James probably doesn't say, anyway.
I had lunch afterwards at the Cosy Pew Café, just round the corner from the Cathedral, poring over every word in the guide because I had brought nothing else with me to read. I wondered despondently if this was the spinsterish future that awaits me: collecting cathedrals and reading at the table in twee restaurants.

One redeeming feature

One redeeming feature of the expedition was that I saw Gloucester Cathedral for the first time. It's not huge, but beautifully proportionated, built of mellow Cotswold stone, with a remarkable square Perpendicular tower that has delicate fretted stonework running round the top like a balustrade. The cloisters are exquisite - among the finest in the country my Visitor's Guide claimed, and with justification, I should say. Edward II is buried here. All I know about him is from Marlowe's play, which may not be reliable, but makes him seem like a real person who once lived and breathed, not just a name in a history book. It seemed extraordinary to stand beside the remains of somebody who lived seven hundred years ago, and know who he was. If Ralph Messenger is right, the atoms of his dust are indestructible. But it is my mind that preserves his identity, and makes a connection between us.
As I trod the worn paving of the ancient aisles, pausing at intervals to admire fine brasses and carved statuary, another literary association came to mind. In the Golden Bowl Charlotte and the Prince begin their adulterous affair at Gloucester, delaying their return to London from a houseparty on the pretext of viewing the cathedral- and there's a reference to the tomb of Edward II, I'm sure. Did they really visit,it, to give circumstantial plausibility to their story when they returned to their respective spouses, or did they spend every stolen moment in their room at in the inn selected by the resourceful Charlotte? I don't have the novel to hand to check . James probably doesn't say, anyway.
I had lunch afterwards at the Cosy Pew Café, just round the corner from the Cathedral, poring over every word in the guide because I had brought nothing else with me to read. I wondered despondently if this was the spinsterish future that awaits me: collecting cathedrals and reading at the table in twee restaurants.

I'd been In Cheltenham

I'd been In Cheltenham only once before, a few years ago, to do a reading at the Literary Festival, and was hardly there long enough to acquire much sense of the place. This morning I drove helplessly round the one-way streets for some time until I spotted the neoclassical hulk of the Town Hall where they hold the Festival events ( a building of dingy brownish stone, with a pompous oversized portico, that looks clumsy against the surrounding Regency terraces of white stucco) and then I knew where I was. I left the car in the first car park I came to, and made for the town centre. It was a cold day, but dry and sunny, and I spent an enjoyable hour hour or so strolling along the Promenade, browsing in Waterstone's buying a blouse in Laura Ashley and a pair of trousers in Country Casuals, having a light lunch in a café served by waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms with white aprons. I briefly explored a long , two-storied shopping mall discretely hidden in a parallel street, but quickly retreated from its airless atmosphere and tinkling muzak. I followed a sign to the Art Gallery and Museum, which specializes in the history of domestic art and design - appropriately enough because everywhere you go in Cheltenham you see restoration and refurbishment of the old houses and terraces going on, inside and out, a kind of collective cult of the House Beautiful.
From the book "Thinks" by David Lodge

The proof of the experiment is if their behaviour

The proof of the experiment is if their behaviour seems interesting, plausible, revealing about human nature. Seems to whom? To the 'reader' - who is not Mr Cleverdick the reviewer, or Mr Sycophant the publicist, but some kind of ideal reader, shrewd, intelligent, demanding but fair, whose persona you try to adopt as you read your own work in the process of composition. I sort of resent the idea of science poking its nose into this business. Hasn't science already appropriated enough of reality ? Must it lay claim to the intangible invisible essential self as well?
I'm a self-taught two-finger typist, prone to error (for which reason I Thank God - and science- for the invention of the word-processor). But some words I always seem to mistype. One of them is 'science' which invariably appears on the screen of my computer as 'scince', with a reproachful red wiggly line drawn under it by the automatic spell-checker. I duly correct it, but there is something onomatopoeically appropriate about ?scince? (pronounce skince) which I am sorry to lose: it expresses the cold, pitiless, reductive character of scientific explanations of the world. I feel this hard, cold, almost ruthless quality In Ralph Messenger. His reaction to Martin's death, when the subject came up in the course of lunch, was like having a bowl of icy water dashed in one's face.It shocked and angered me - I almost got up and left him at the table. But I'm glad I didn't. I might never have seen the Karinthy mural, for one thing. It provoked all kinds of ideas.
From the book 'Thinks? by David Lodge

One, two, three, testing

One, two, three, testing, testing... [belches] Pardon me! It's, what, 6.51 p.m. on Wednesday 26th February... I'm still in my office, instead of at home, warming my bum in front of the fire and enjoying the first drink of the day, because we have a problem in the Brain... I got a message this afternoon that Captain Haddock had crashed, but it seems to be a hardware failure or possibly wiring... there are technicians and sparks crawling all over the place at the moment trying to locate the source of the trouble and I don't feel like going home until I know that it's been fixed ... the thought of an electrical fire breaking out in the Brain in the middle of the night is scary, unlikely as it is... So I called Carrie to say I'd be late and settle down to do some work on staff assessment I've been putting off... so many fucking forms these days... but when I unlocked the filing cabinet where I keep confidential material my eye fell on the old Pearlcoder and I couldn't resist listening to the tape I recorded last Sunday morning. I played back the tape on the recorder just now , and I must say it was absolutely riveting... though of doubtful experimental value ...not that I'll ever be able to quote much of it in a paper, it's far too personal, too revealing, not to say raunchy at times... but it was fascinating to... to as if were eavesdrop on one's own thoughts.
From the book 'Thinks', by David Lodge